Senior Technical Lead of Research Infrastructure

Job Summary

Office of Information Technology encourages applications for a Senior Technical Lead of Research Infrastructure
. This role provides technical leadership and hands‑on expertise for research computing infrastructure, including HPC systems, research storage, and Blanca clusters. The Lead serves as the senior technical expert and primary mentor for HPC Specialists and Storage System Administrators within the Research Infrastructure Technology team. This position also translates architectural direction from the Associate Director into practical implementation, leads complex technical work, and develops team capabilities through direct mentorship and guidance.

CU is an Equal Opportunity Employer and complies with all applicable federal, state, and local laws governing nondiscrimination in employment. We are committed to creating a workplace where all individuals are treated with respect and dignity, and we encourage individuals from all backgrounds to apply, including protected veterans and individuals with disabilities.

OIT will be valued by campus as a strategic, inclusive and innovative partner in advancing learning and discovery in order to enable CU Boulder to be an outstanding public university.

OIT enables campus priorities by providing high‑value IT services and solutions.

• Trust, as a foundation for how we engage with one another and with campus partners, along with
• Curiosity in how to better support the campus and our partner’s while
• Encouraging empowerment and authentic engagement among ourselves and
• Celebrating a culture that promotes a sense of belonging while acknowledging that each person is unique and valued.

• OIT will advance learning and discovery by delivering high‑value reliable IT services and solutions that:
• Provide a fluid and adaptable academic and student experience
• Enable research competitiveness and
• Deliver core infrastructure and enterprise IT services for business efficiency.

• Technical Leadership & Implementation

  The Senior Technical Lead translates architectural direction into hands‑on infrastructure solutions, serving as the team's primary technical escalation point when complex HPC and storage challenges arise. This role shapes day‑to‑day technical decision‑making for infrastructure operations and improvements, while establishing and maintaining the technical standards, procedures, and standard practices that guide the team's systems work. The position tackles sophisticated multi‑system issues that span infrastructure domains and champions automation, monitoring, and operational improvements that strengthen system reliability.

• Systems Administration & Operations

  This position performs hands‑on administration of HPC clusters, storage systems (ZFS, RAID, GPFS, Lustre), and parallel computing infrastructure, leading complex system changes, upgrades, and optimizations. It conducts hardware repairs, OS configuration (Linux/Unix), and software updates while optimizing system performance, resource utilization, and data‑transfer capabilities (Globus). The position manages compute resources and job schedulers (SLURM), automates infrastructure provisioning through configuration management tools (Ansible, Puppet, Chef), and develops monitoring and observability platforms (Nagios, Grafana) to maintain system reliability.

• Team Mentorship & Capability Development

  The Senior Technical Lead mentors HPC and Storage System Administrators on technical skills and problem‑solving approaches, providing hands‑on guidance during complex implementations and troubleshooting. This role develops team capabilities through pairing, code reviews, and guided learning while building team confidence to handle infrastructure challenges independently. The position coaches team members on user documentation and knowledge‑sharing, supports cross‑training initiatives to reduce single points of failure, and champions a collaborative problem‑solving culture within the RIT team.

• Documentation & Knowledge Management

  The Senior Technical Lead maintains technical runbooks, procedures, and troubleshooting guides while documenting system configurations and implementation…